Editor’s note: This article first appeared on the Strategist in September 2019, and almost a year later, it remains an example of a product that does what it’s supposed to do — exceptionally well. So we’re republishing the article today as part of Ingenious Design Week.
No matter how late I’m running in the morning, no matter how hungover I am or how lazy I feel or how much I don’t want to do it, I make my bed. If my bed is made and my in-box is at zero, my mind is at peace. For years, that meant spending 10 exasperated minutes every single day doing what I think we can all agree is the worst part of the bed-making process: jostling my duvet around to make sure it lay flat inside its cover with all four corners aligned.
This all changed one fateful day in 2015, when I Googled “how to get your duvet to stay in place.” The first result was an Amazon link for some padded clips, which, according to the description, could hold the the duvet and the cover together from the inside. I bought two sets, per the reviews, which suggested putting a clip on each of your duvet’s four corners and four along each of its sides.
When they arrived, I put them straight to the test. I flipped the cover inside out and aligned each of the duvet’s four corners with the cover’s four corners. Then I clipped them together as recommended — one on each of the corners, four along each of the sides. To finish, I turned the cover right-side out and gave the whole thing a robust shake to see if the clips (whose teeth, by the way, are soft, so they won’t damage the fabric) would hold strong. They did.
Since I bought these clips five years ago, my comforter, which used to bunch in the middle practically every night, has stayed perfectly, perpetually aligned with its cover. I’ve accidentally thrown it on the floor in the heat of summer, have wrapped it around myself like a cocoon, and have tossed and turned all night in bed — no matter, it stays put. This makes sleeping much, much more comfortable (I should mention here that you don’t feel these clips at all unless you’re actively reaching around to make sure they’re still there). I never find myself, as I once did, sleeping underneath just a thin, duvet-less duvet cover. Most important, though, I no longer have to waste time making the lumped-up comforter fill its cover in the morning, which has cut my bed-making time from 10 minutes to two and means my made bed looks especially neat, as if hotel housekeeping stopped by my apartment daily.
And because the clips make it so much easier to get the duvet back inside its cover after it has been taken out (a process I used to compare to getting my dog, Marshall, into his doggie tote when he knows he’s going to the groomer), I wash both components more often. After putting my freshly laundered cover back on on a couple of weeks ago, I tucked myself into bed and felt, for a moment, genuine sadness for people who don’t own these weird, little $5 life changers.
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